


Turning the Tables

by Julia451



Category: AUSTEN Jane - Works, Persuasion - Jane Austen, austen - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 19:58:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14339862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Julia451/pseuds/Julia451
Summary: WARNING: Written by a Jane Austen fan who is nonetheless NOT a fan of the moral of Persuasion (it's a woman duty to yield to bad advice), the resolution of Persuasion (Anne makes the wrong choice, Wentworth has to apologize), nor how all the blame is placed on Wentworth while Anne is praised from beginning to end. I wrote this passage at the time the novel's outrageous moral and conclusion hit me full force (which was not the first time I read it). Some paragraphs I felt were missing from the last chapters.





	Turning the Tables

It was in one of these short meetings, each apparently occupied in admiring a fine display of green-house plants, that he said—  
  
“I have been thinking over the past, and trying impartially to judge of the right and wrong, I mean with regard to myself; and I must believe that I was right, much as I suffered from it, that I was perfectly right in not automatically assuming that I ought to renew the engagement when I returned to England in the year eight, with a few thousand pounds. I could not insult you by believing you to be either mercenary enough to value my wealth more than my love, or less than a rational creature speaking from the heart three years before. You had given me no invitation to return or permission to hope but absolutely put an end to the engagement, and I could only pay you the compliment of believing you sincere and believing what you said. I respected your wishes, as you made me understand them, for a relinquishment; I had too little pride in myself and too much respect for you to do otherwise, unlike so many men are wont to do when confronted with a woman’s refusal. It would have been more reprehensible in me to assume I had a right to renew the engagement. I have now, as far as such a sentiment is allowable in human nature, nothing to reproach myself with; and if I mistake not, the ability to take “No” for an answer is no bad part of a man’s portion.”  
  
Anne replied after a moment of cool deliberation, “It was Lady Russell who deprecated the connexion in every light, not I, and I let her convince me that marrying you would be wrong―indiscreet, improper, and hardly capable of success. I shut my eyes and would not do you justice. This is a recollection which ought to make me forgive everyone sooner than myself. Eight years of separation and suffering would have been spared. I soon concluded that under every disadvantage of disapprobation at home, and every anxiety attending your profession, all our probable, fears, delays, and disappointments, I should yet have been a happier woman in marrying you, than I had been in the sacrifice of you. But I was proud, too proud to admit this to you, and instead boasted that I was right in submitting to her, and that if I had done otherwise, I should have suffered more in marrying you than I did even in giving you up. What was I trying to prove if not that adhering to your personal convictions may be more important than romantic love, but apparently not more important than friendship?”  
  
There was no answer.


End file.
